As a chef, Sash Simpson has a gift for stirring the senses, crafting dishes mixing up various cultural influences such a French-prepared dover sole in meunière sauce accompanied with Peruvian potatoes and spaghetti comes with chili lamb meatballs for his namesake restaurant in Toronto, which is why when he steps foot in India where he spent much of his youth in “Born Hungry,” it is especially alarming when he can’t feel much at all on streets where the aroma of spices can be overwhelming, but any desire to live in the moment is dashed when his thoughts are consumed instead by what he can’t remember.
For the longest time, it was not his interest to remember as memories of living on the streets as an orphan could be too painful to return to and an ability to only look ahead served him well as he rose through the ranks of the culinary world, starting out as a dishwasher at a restaurant his sister worked as a waitress to eventually leading the staff as a head chef at North 44, a fine dining destination started by celebrity chef Mark McEwen. However, in opening a restaurant of his own, he was compelled to look back at what brought him there, first in a New York Times profile in conjunction with the opening of Sash in 2021 and subsequently by filmmakers Barry Avrich and Mark Selby, who coordinate a cross-continental adventure for the chef to rediscover his roots.
In “Born Hungry,” Simpson has chefs from the diaspora to keep him company, visiting a fish market in Chennai with Thomas Zacharias and making chicken biryani in Mumbai with Shipra Khanna, but has a journey he can only go on alone as he searches for any clues to locate his birth parents and has only hazy memories of the places he once lived in mind. Returning to an empty theater he once slept in and visiting the orphanage he once called home, he starts to reclaims some memories as his family in India remains mostly a mystery, yet the one that formed around him in Canada upon his relocation in 1979 comes into focus to give the film a beating heart in so many ways, from the remarkable story of Sandra Simpson, a philanthropist who took in dozens of orphaned children including Sash, and helped place many others through her foundation Families for Children International, to Sash’s sister Kissoni, who introduced him to the restaurant business, and his wife Robin.
It isn’t only the food that’s flavorful in “Born Hungry,” as Avrich identifies all the ingredients that have come to shape Simpson into the person he’s become and illustrates the support system that’s allowed him to thrive, even well after he’s established himself as a premier chef as he faces the difficulty of keeping the doors of Sash open when the world was slowly emerging from the worst of the pandemic. That’s why it was quite heartening to hear that Simpson had to push our interview back an hour to accommodate a busy lunch service recently, but on the eve of the film’s premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival this weekend, he graciously ducked into the back of the house to talk about opening up about his remarkable life, joined by Avrich and Selby, who make a meal of the chef’s extraordinary travels.
How did this come about?
Barry Avrich: I’m a long-time documentary filmmaker, so I’m always looking for extraordinary stories, certainly if there’s a story that involves food and travel, and [with] somebody who gets to reinvent themselves and discover themselves like Sash has, I was immediately attracted to the story. There’s obvious comparisons to the film “Lion,” which I found riveting, and yet this was a story in our own backyard. I can’t tell you how many times I walked past Sash’s restaurant, and went to the restaurant he originally worked at [North 44], and had no idea. The New York Times wrote this incredible story, and I went, “My God, this is incredible.” So I went for dinner one day at Sash’s restaurant, and I went, “My God, this is incredible. I think there’s a film here.” And what was critical for me and for Mark, we produced this together, was to take Sash back to India and see what happens. Light the fire, and watch somebody find themselves again. So that’s how it began, and as somebody that’s made over 60 films, this is one of the films I’m definitely most proud of.
Sash, was it much of a decision to open up to cameras like this?
Sash Simpson: Back in the day, I think it was maybe almost 20 years ago, Jay Hennick said to me, “Sash, you’ve got to tell your story,” and I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
Barry Avrich: Jay Hennick is the executive producer of the film and has been a longtime patron of Sash’s, so he was one of the people who certainly came to me and suggested this would be a great story. And as I began to sort of do my research, I agreed, but I had no idea truly how international the story is and was, and the fact that we’d be embarking on a bit of a detective story as well.
Sash Simpson: [Jay] goes “Okay, you’re doing a movie,” and sends Barry in, and the rest is history. I did television [on the Food Network] for about three years, but this one was totally, totally different. You’re talking about me and everything that I’ve been through, so it was a bit crazy, and I didn’t know what I wanted to say and reveal, but then I realized, you know what? I have to say everything that I’ve been through, and if we’re going to tell a story, Barry and Mark were great ones to help me with it.
Mark, when it is a bit of a detective story as well as this culinary adventure, what’s it like to put together a travel itinerary?
Mark Selby: We were lucky to have a great fixer there who helped us make all the arrangements locally, but all the research was done from Canada on our own based on what information we knew about Sash’s past and the places where he had lived. We weren’t there for a long time, so we were shooting day and night. We’d get up in the morning, we’d hit the road, and we’d be shooting all the whole time. Even in the car, we would interview Sash on the drive from one location to another, and we’d get there, and maybe it was the movie theater, maybe it was one of the restaurants, one of the markets that he walked through with the other chefs, Chef Thomas and Chef Shipra [Khama], so we were constantly shooting.
Barry Avrich: The lens was eating up every frame that we took because it was just so beautiful — this culinary explosion of a trip back to India, and watching Sash walk through those streets, eat food on the streets, find himself and who he is. He has Indian blood running through him, but [we were all trying] to understand the root of it and understand what it is to walk into that country, which is so extraordinary and visceral and fragrant.
Mark Selby: Of course, the trip wouldn’t have been complete without visiting the orphanage, and it was just such an emotional experience for all of us to be there and to see these incredible children and adults. In some cases, people that get taken in by Families for Children don’t necessarily leave the orphanage. As Sash says in the film, he’s one of the lucky ones. He got adopted, and he was able to start a new life in Canada, so the whole thing was exhausting in the best possible way because it was just relentless. There was no downtime, and we were going from town to town, city to city, and shooting the whole time.
Barry Avrich: It’s that survival instinct that I found quite charming and also inspiring as we took this journey with Sash. [We had] to understand the complexity of Sash’s character to survive the streets of India, survive an orphanage, and come to Canada without any formal education in the culinary world at all, and then to be taught by [Mark McEwen] one of the most successful chefs in North America who built a restaurant empire, and then to have the guts again to roll the dice and open up his own restaurant as COVID hits — that’s another part, is extraordinary.
Mark Selby: We had photos from his family. We found film taken in Canadian news archives, taken of the family over the years, and getting back to something Sash said earlier about how he had done TV earlier in his career, this was a Canadian TV show that followed Mark McEwen, the person he was working for who’s also in our film, and we found some great clips of the show that really helped flesh out the earlier part of Sash’s story, [which] was great because when you’re working nights as a chef in a restaurant, you don’t really get a lot of camera time anywhere else, so we were grateful that so much of Sash’s life lent itself to us being able to tell his story.
Sash, was there anything important for you to come through in the final product?
Barry Avrich: I’ll just add before Sash says anything, Sash has not seen the film yet. I want him falling apart in pieces and tears, sitting next to me. He has seen a trailer and a piece here and there, but he’s not seen the film, so we’re waiting for that, which is torture, but I love it.
Sash Simpson: Yeah, I’m getting nervous about it — excited nervous, that is. But as far as the story, kids go through this a lot in India and around the world and like I’ve said many times, I was a lucky one to get the hell out of that orphanage and [get] a new life. It just happens that my story is being told by Barry and the gang, and I’m very appreciative. At the same time, it’s going to be a story for everybody. Don’t give up. It doesn’t matter how tough times are. You’ve got to keep going at it, and for me, it’s always been that. I don’t think failure is an option for me in any way. I’m one of those guys that’s always said things will get better and my family and I kept on driving at it, and there’s more bad times than good.
Now, it’s another phase of my life and the restaurant was opened in COVID with no partners and that was a big risk I took. What idiot does a restaurant in COVID, not that anybody knew COVID was coming? And everybody goes, “What do you mean you don’t have any partners? You’re doing this on your own.” As a family, we put all the eggs in one basket. And was I scared as hell? 100%, every night, no sleep, tears in my eyes about the business and everything I put in. And what if I lost it? Where would I be? Would I go back to a line cook and work another restaurant — I don’t know. And I’ll tell you, the pandemic really scared the shit out of me in so many ways as far as how my life was going to go forward. But failure wasn’t an option for me at any point. It was just keep it going, and I never worked so hard for my money in the pandemic.
Barry Avrich: It’s not really part of the film because how many stories can you tell? However, what’s interesting is that every restaurant went through this during COVID, and there are many that closed as we know, but Sash has this clientele that have been supportive of him from the minute they met him in his previous life working for another chef, so during COVID, you saw a line-up of cars waiting outside his restaurant, [expressing], “Let’s keep Sash in business,” and people would pick up food and send it to other people just to keep him in business. That said a lot to me in making this film about him. The loyalty is quite something.
It seems particularly beautiful then to see that moment of Sash serving food back at the orphanage in India.
Barry Avrich: Oh my, yeah. Certainly for Sash going back to the orphanage, [it] was so breathtaking from a humanity perspective. I am changed forever watching all of that. But again, for Sash, walking in there, nothing’s changed and yet everything has for him, seeing the people there, from the super young to people in their late 60s who will never leave. The shoot in India was meticulously planned, like a military operation right down to the last minute because you just couldn’t afford to take chances of down days. Poor Mark, I drove him crazy before we left.
Sash Simpson: And I thought I was a slave driver in the kitchen!
Barry Avrich: [laughs] No downtime, no downtime.” Because you know things are going to go wrong, but nothing did. Everything went well, but no one could have anticipated what it was like to walk into the orphanage and be so moved. And when you edit a film, it’s a Rubik’s Cube. How do you put the pieces together? We figure out where things go, and that scene we knew was so dramatic. It sends home that message of no matter what’s going on in your life, no matter what’s going on in the world, stop for a moment, look at your own life, and then figure out how to give back.
“Born Hungry” will screen at the Palm Springs Film Festival on January 6th at Mary Pickford is D’Place at 4 pm, January 7th at Regal Cinemas at 10 am and January 13th at Mary Pickford is D’Place at 4 pm.